Watch Valve’s The International 2012 Documentary

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Valve – little-known Washington-based developers of Richochet and Alien Swarm – have been working on another project for the past couple of years. It’s a remake of an obscure mod called “Defense Of The Ancients”. This unlikely sequel has been a surprise hit, with “computer gamers” from all over the world saying that it’s “quite good” and “maybe I’ll play just a bit more”. This rash streak of acceptance has recently culminated in a championship of some kind, mysteriously dubbed “The International 2012”.

Valve took their camcorders and video-phones along to capture the event – which took place in some kind of space center – as you can see below.

Footnote 1a: The grand prize for this tournament was ONE MILLION DOLLARS. That’s about twenty-five thousand Space Credits, or seventy-eight pieces of Fantasy Index Platinum.

I love dota2 :p great fun.. really difficult, but fun!
Also, have two copies of the invite if anyone wants XD they have been spamming them out like mad lately.. Really they should just throw up a few dozen more servers and open the game up public.. they are already making tons of money off it.

Well, yes you are wrong, nobody is hoarding invites as you say, since they aren’t worth anything anymore. They used to be worth quite a bit back a year ago, when they were rare, the demand was high and there wasn’t the ability to buy an invite from Valve directly, which was a messure to regulate the rediculous black market prices for Dota 2 invites. But even back then, nobody was able to “hoard” them, because if somebody got an invite, they would never give it away by simply trading it. They would either sell the invite, or give it to a friend.

Also, Valve banned people for what? “trade hoarding”? What? Why would Valve ban people for trading valueable items in their games? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not against any rules to trade items and hoard them. And why would it be smart to ban people that trade and hoard items. I think that would be quite the opposite of smart. I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Well you are wrong, because Valve does do exactly what skinlo said above you. Just a week ago they did another invite wave, with most players getting 3-6 invite keys to give out. I’d never gotten any to give out before, and suddenly I ended up with 5 myself.

Thank you for clarifying. I have to wonder though: why doesn’t Valve just hand out more random invites? It would be just as effective, if not more so, than giving handfuls of keys to players who already have access to the game. At the very least it would help stymy all the hoarding they were so concerned about when DotA2 entered beta.

Also, a cursory glance at the Steam forums makes it look like DotA2 beta key trading is still going on. I guess I was mistaken.

It is actually much more effective to hand out beta invites to existing beta players, since I’d say anybody who really wanted to get into the beta, is in it by now. By handing out multiple keys to existing beta players, they can reach people that possible havn’t considered the game yet. As in, friends of dedicated Dota players. Also, by giving keys to existing players, the game becomes more enjoyable to play because Dota is at its best when you play it in a team of friends.

And I don’t really see why you are so concened about trading beta invites. It is perfectly ok to trade your beta invite key, for lets say a bunch of consmetics, or TF2 items, or even for a cheap indie game. It’s not against the rules. If Valve didn’t want people to trade the invites, they could just make them untradable. What is against the rules is selling Dota invites for real money outside of Steam.

Anyway, if you are still looking for an invite to Dota 2, it’s pretty easy to get one, look how many people are giving them away in this comment section alone.

Is there a specific lens or something that’s used to make documentaries these days?
There’s a common shot where a subject is shown in focus while computer screens just a few feet further away are quite intensely out of focus with pronounced “bokeh” effects from the blurring of the bright light.

It’s common to shoot with Digital SLRs now too, which have huge sensors compared with traditional camcorders. Larger sensors contribute to a shallower depth of field (more background blur) especially when combined with a low-aperture lens.

EDIT: Relatively inexpensive too. A £500 EOS 600D with a £95 EF 50mm 1.8 will give you incredibly shallow DoF and excellent quality while costing less than a top end consumer camcorder let alone professional kit. When I worked in pro-video you’d routinely spend £4000 on a portable non-interchangeable lens camcorder. Mental.

I was under a similar impression at one point. I think it was because Valve had said that one of the reasons they liked employing Ellen McClain for voice acting was because she lived in Seattle which was local to them. Which gave the impression that they were located in Seattle themselves.

huh…that’s strange…..wasn’t there another international 2 documentary announced? one of the disapproving-parents-who-tell-their-kids-to-do-homework-instead-of-DOTA variety. Did they find that too depressing and changed their mind or what?